The complex figure of the mother in the classical fairytale has been refined and elaborated in the course of its transmission across the generations. It is all the more striking and unexpected to encounter a figure of similar complexity at the heart of a contemporary film of the ‘horror’ genre. In her recently released film, TheBabadook, first time writer/director Jennifer Kent manages to expose and to dramatise some of the unacknowledged currents at stake in the relation between a mother and her child. Here Roger Litten recounts for us some of the elements of this tale, tracing the steps that allow us to glimpse something of the horror underlying the apparently innocuous utterance: “I am... your Mother”. Roger Litten is a member of the London Society of the New Lacanian School, the NLS and the WAP.
Edition: Florencia Fernandez Coria Shanahan, Vanessa Sudreau and Omaïra Meseguer.